Google’s self-driving car pulled over, escapes without a ticket

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How do you pull over a car that drives itself? Maybe you just turn on your sirens and hope the passenger tells the car to do so. That’s the situation that recently happened when a police officer in California decided to pull over one of Google’s self-driving cars. No, it wasn’t running into people or careening off the road, in fact, the car didn’t do anything wrong at all.

A Mountain View Police Department officer grew suspicious when he saw the car driving at 24mph in a 35mph zone. The car is capped at a 25mph speed limit. “As the officer approached the slow moving car he realized it was a Google Autonomous Vehicle,” the Mountain View Police blog explained. The officer was primarily curious about how the car operated, and it wasn’t in violation of any law. In fact, it’s supposed to be driven on roads “with speed limits at or under 35mph,” the blog post explained, noting that the speed limit was “lawful.” Google says this is relatively common – folks wondering how the car works.

“Sometimes people flag us down when they want to know more about our project,” Google said. “After 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving, we’re proud to say we’ve never been ticketed.”